Today on the League of Legends site, Riot employee Hippalus discussed their company plans for changes to IP/RP prices and the champion release schedule. There's some big changes coming -- specifically to champion pricing, which will now have tiers where older champions will go down in price whenever a new champion is released. But lets start at the beginning...

Over the past few months, the rate of releasing champions has slowed. For 2013, Riot's goal is to release 14-17 new champions -- around one every three to four weeks. This not only gives their design team more time to polish each new champion, but it gives you more time to save IP in-between champion releases. That's good, because Riot is adding IP and RP price tiers, including a new 7800 IP tier. The tiers are:

To help you understand, there will be a price reduction schedule that Riot is implementing. All brand-new champions will cost 7800 IP/975 RP for the first week only, and will then be reduced to 6300 IP. This should help with everyone buying a new champion and dodging when they don't get to play it. Every time a new champion is released, the oldest 6300 IP/975 RP champion will be reduced to 4800 IP/880 RP -- the next lowest tier. In addition, with every third champion release, an additional champion currently priced at 4800 IP or lower will be reduced to the next lowest tier, based on age and ease of play.

Did you get all that?

To make it easier, Riot provided a Tl;dr:

In addition to all of this, the seven oldest 6300 IP champions are getting an immediate price reduction. These champions are Ezreal, Vladimir, Renekton, Nocturne, Lee Sin, Brand and Vayne. They are all reduced to 4800 IP/880 RP. If you bought these champions in the two weeks prior to today, Riot will automatically refund the difference for you.

I think the new changes are great. In fact, they're amazing, and the 7800 IP tier is genius for the first week. This is how you help deal with overpopulation of a champion at release.

You can follow Senior Editor Lance Liebl on Twitter @Lance_GZ. He likes talking sports, video games, movies, and the stupidity of celebrities. Email at LLiebl@GameZone.com